Quickshot post

No newspost tonight, kids, sorry. Got the beginnings of a scratchy throat and should probably get beauty sleep. I promise, plenty of stuff tomorrow, including an Anonymous protest, musings on Kirkwood, and whether it is possible to drink enough tea to keep a sore throat completely at bay.

Fighting off the bad stuff - 12 February 2008

Dosed myself with OJ, made tea when I got to work, and kept the throat stuff down to a minimum of scratchiness and pain. Even told stories today that were well-received and fun. Of course, I came home to laundry and dishes and such and so I’ve been zipping about trying to do stuff before bed.

On Sunday, Anonymous took on Scientology, with several masked persons protesting outside their local Scientology centers. deathboy gives his take on Anonymous versus Scientology, including a requisite Portal joke with a happy ending.

ldragoon wants us all to know we have very special children, because they’re magenta children. Seriously.

Payday lenders continue to prey on the elderly, this time having them basically sign over their benefit checks over to the loan companies for debts that never quite get paid. While payday lenders prey and rape those on fixed income, GM reports a nearly $39-billion loss for the year 2007. Michigan’s not going to stabilize any time soon with those kinds of numbers. Of course, it costs more to make coinage than the coinage is worth, so everyone’s running a deficit these days, I guess.

In news not related to Middle Eastern countries, Venezuela has threatened to halt production to the United States if ExxonMobil doesn't stop trying to claim billions in compensation when President Hugo Chaven nationalized the oil and gas production corporations. I believe, since then, Mr. Chavez has sworn off selling any oil to ExxonMobil.

The Army has been suppressing a 2005 RAND corporation study that found nearly every organization that had a role in planning Iraq deficient. The report is still unplublished, nearly three years after its completion. Wonder if it will take until the current cronies are out of office to have a shot at publication. And if that’s the case, I wonder what’s in that report that the Army feels it has to suppress. The Defense Secretary isn’t making friends either, with Mr. Gates supporting the pausing of a troop drawdown from Iraq .

Six detainees of Guantanamo are charged in relation to the 11 September attacks. That’s right, more than six years after the event, the government is seeking the death penalty, and the trial is through a tribunal. This sounds like a textbook example of why Mr. Bush wanted the right to detain without habeas corpus. And then he has the hubris to compare this trial to the ones at Nuremberg. I wonder what spurs him on now. Oh, and Scalia says torture's okay, too.

After stabbing their domestic partners in the front and back repeatedly with REAL ID, now The United States is making demands of transatlantic flights to provide personal data, apply for their permits beforehand, and have armed guards flying on all Europe-America flights. Geez, the stupid, it burns. At least the U.S. isn’t trying to put up a giant magnifying glass in space to fry all the opposition. Admittedly, though, Europe plans on fingerprinting anyone who visits them, so perhaps the paranoia is spreading.

An ancient practice revived - shunning from the congregation and expulsion, even using the force of law and trespassing charges against the shunned to try and get them into a repentant state of mind. Even scarier, some congregants seem to think it’s a good idea to do such things. For an example of what happens when that tack is followed, Iran has a draft law on the table that would demand death for those who convert from Islam.

According to the police chiefs in the United Kingdom, Up to 17,000 women every year are victims of "honor"-related violence. Tell me, what’s honorable or manly about visiting violence on another being, especially one whose only connection may be that she loves or is a sibling of the man who offended? Or honorable about telling a child who s/he’s going to marry and then forcing him/her to go through with it.

Slightly less deadly or violent, the Bible's getting a manga makeover. I wonder whether the Samurai Christ will do some samurai-speak, but it looks like it’s the action parts, mostly.

Back here in the United States, the government has admitted that telecoms have wiretapped Americans without warrants, a clearly illegal act, and one that will be consigned as a footnote to history if the Senate version of the FISA bill is passed up to the President’s desk, granting them retroactive immunity. The Wall Street Journal's Editorial board thinks immunity is swell, and that those pesky libruls are trying to make it so our Patriotic Telecoms don’t cooperate with the government’s requests without warrants. And then suggest that even if no telecom immunity is granted, that the President invoke war powers to do it anyway, a flagrant disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution Mr. Bush swore to uphold.

There’s been a bit of a butterfly ballot problem in Los Angeles County, with double bubble trouble where those who declined to state their party affiliation are not having their votes counted by automatons if they neglected to then fill in a bubble indicating they were voting in a Democratic primary. The machine is not smart, and thus these problems that should be obvious to humans are segfaults in the voting process. Like how a teenager had to campaign for Maryland to allow those turning 18 by the general election this year to participate in the primaries.

Regarding the matter of the Kirkwood City Council being shot up, bradhicks starts with the history of Kirkwood and Meacham Park from founding to about 1990, when Kirkwood annexed Meacham Park to themselves. From there on, The Infamous Brad says, Kirkwood went on a campaign to ensure as few black men over the age of 12 stayed in Meacham Park as possible, which eventually resulted in a situation where the person doing the shooting was ticketed for having a commercial vehicle in his driveway several times in a row, with no relief from the police, the judges, or the city council. So he went in and started shooting, seeing no other options. It’s much more permanent than burning down national treasures, but the underlying anger seems to be the same in both cases.

Two pet-related pieces of material, one good, one bad. The good? A Swedish lesbian couple is able to purchase a puppy for their household, after having had the sale called off because the kennel owner didn’t trust homosexuals (for a reason that has nothing to do with them, but that’s the case.) The bad? Paris Hilton couldn't even be arsed to have someone take care of the cat she adopting, not neutering it for six months, then leaving him at the vet for a week on the neutering. Plus, allegations that there was nobody around to socialize the animals, either. Paris doesn’t have the cat anymore, and I don’t think she will be trusted with one from anyone from here on out.

On a slightly lighter note, Paul Armentano says marijuana could be made into a legal controlled substance, and lays out a plan for accomplishing that end. Such a move could be strongly bolstered by Bruce Mirken's debunking of a new round of anti-marijuana material.

The Tolkein Estate is putting the screws to New Line Cinema, claiming that they were not paid the profits they were promised when New Line made The Lord of the Rings. This could stall or kill the upcoming attempt to do The Hobbit.

Kevin Kelly offers eight things to offer that will sell product even when it can be found in multiple copies for free. Several of these things are what libraries strive to offer, since our materials are available, well, for free (sort of. They get paid for in other manners).

Last for tonight - Purdue University study says artificial sweeteners make it harder to lose weight, not easier. With the low-cal sugar substitutes, rats ate more, gained more weight, and didn’t adjust their schedules to burn off the extra stuff. Even worse for all of us, feeling fat may be worse for your health than actually being fat - all that stress will get to you. Luckily, there are simple ways of converting a sedentary lifestyle into a more active one.

So, to stop stressing my body out, it’s time for bed. Go fold towel monkeys or something.